"Down with the army,” was the chorus stirred up by Islamist cheerleaders in Tahrir Square. “You are going, we are staying,” chanted the crowd.

In the square there was, and remains, an air of menace. Thousands of Islamists have refused to leave, against the orders of the army, in an effort to show that nothing can deny them their chance to seize power.

With Mohammed Morsi’s win, announced by a bumbling election official on live TV and radio, direct confrontation has been avoided for the time being. But the struggle behind the scenes over what power the new president can wield, and who designs a new constitution, is sure to intensify, as are civilian efforts to have oversight or control of the armed forces’ budgets, perks and untaxed cash-cows: factories, petrol stations and hotels.

To ascend to presidential power the Muslim Brotherhood has ridden on the backs of the real revolutionaries. Only when the Mubarak regime was tottering did the Brotherhood — a wily, sly organisation that has slithered through 60 years of on-off state repression — give its members an official command to join in with the idealistic liberals who have now been shunted aside.

President-in-waiting Morsi put in an appearance yesterday afternoon to huge cheers. An engineer trained at a US university, with two sons holding US citizenship, Morsi is hardly a man of the people.

His smart recently-built villa, guarded by suited Islamist security men with walkie-talkies, nestles in a large new gated suburb for the country’s elite, away from the hustle and bustle of Cairo.

Morsi, the Brotherhood’s party chief, officially resigned from it as of today and promised an inclusive government. But this has not quelled widespread worry.

“I feel fear,” said Demiana, a reporter for Channel 25, whose staff is made up mostly of young people who took part in the revolution. She fears the Islamists will inexorably bring in sweeping social changes that may include stopping her wearing her blue jeans and a short-sleeved blouse.

Many liberals deliberately spoiled their ballot papers in the run-off between two men. General Ahmed Shafiq found considerable support for his vow to restore law and order. But the young revolutionaries rejected general Shafiq, parachuted into office as prime minister days before Hosni Mubarak’s fall, as a return to the same type of rule they wanted to eliminate when they forced out Mubarak.

Given this link to the toppled dictator, it is surprising Shafiq got as much as 48 per cent of the vote. Also, he had little or no organisational support. The headquarters of the now dissolved former government political party close to Tahrir Square remain a burned-out hulk. The Muslim Brotherhood, with its long-term food and medical support for poorer communities, largely funded by Saudi and Gulf money, commands an in-built loyalty and an unrivalled organisation.

More than 250 buses yesterday drove demonstrators to Tahrir Square from the Egyptian hinterland.

“There’ll be an exodus of the well-educated and the better-off,” predicted a businessman as he watched events unfold from his Nile-side balcony. There are five days to go before the armed forces officially hands over some, but not all, of its powers to the president.

“The revolution was completed today,” a young army officer told me. But he said there are worries inside the army over the Muslim Brotherhood’s fitness for office.

“Morsi does not have the experience to run anything, let alone a country,” a scuba diving instructor complained, sipping mango juice near the square. “But we are Egyptians — we have one big thing: hope.”